《自由的深渊》第一章（1）

前言：

Perhaps the best-known single line from film noir is the final remark of the doomed hero in Edgar G. Ulmer’s Detour: “Fate or some mysterious force can put the finger on you or me for no good reason at all." This parlance provides a concise expression of the central enigma Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775-1854) struggled to resolve throughout his long philosophical career - the enigma of FREEDOM, of the sudden suspension of the principle of sufficient reason," discernible from God's radically contingent act of creation up to the irrational insistence of a stubborn child on a seemingly trifling point, on which, however, he is ready to stake everything. Schelling's solution involves an unheard-of reversal of the very terms of this enigma: what if the thing to be explained is not FREEDOM but the emergence of the chains of reason, of the causal network or, to quote Schelling himself: The whole world is thoroughly caught in reason, but the question is: how did it get caught in the network of reason in the first place?

或许黑色电影中最著名的台词是埃德加（Edgar G. Ulmer）导演的《迂回》（Detour）中注定败亡的英雄的遗言：“命运或某些神秘力量会毫无理由地降临到你我身上。”这句话是对谢林在他漫长哲学生涯中一直竭力解决的核心谜题——自由之谜与“充足理由律”突然中断之谜的一个简洁表述。从上帝的极其偶然的创世行动到固执的孩子“非理性地”坚持一个看起来微不足道的观点（然而，他准备为此赌上一切），人们都可以觉察到那个自由之谜。谢林的解答涉及到对这个谜团做出的前所未有的翻转：如果要解答的不是自由而是理性链条或因果网络的出现呢？用谢林本人的话说：“整个世界完全陷入在理性之中，但问题是：它最初是如何陷入理性之网的？”

Nowhere is the endeavor to comprehend this enigma more strenuous than in the three drafts of Die Weltalter ("Ages of the World") from 1811 to 1815. For many years, the third draft, from 1815, was the only one known to exist; it was published in volume 8 of Schellings Works edited by his son, Karl, immediately after the philosophers death. The two previous drafts were discovered at the end of World War II in the debris of the Munich University library, destroyed by the Allied bombings; they were published in 1946. The three drafts remain fragments: all of them contain only book 1 of the planned trilogy of Past, Present, and Future. They are interrupted at the crucial point of giving an account of the differentiation between Past and Present, of the emergence of the Word from the self-enclosed rotary motion of drives. However, in their very Failure, they are arguably the acme of German Idealism and, simultaneously, a breakthrough into an unknown domain whose contours became discernible only in the aftermath of German Idealism. This breakthrough is most tangible in the second draft, and for this reason it was chosen for translation in the present volume. The work bears witness to such an effort of thought that it is almost painful to read.

为了解决这个谜团而付出的努力之艰苦，莫过于谢林在1811年到1815年间创作的三份《世界时代》手稿。多年以来，第三手稿是已知保存下来的唯一手稿，它被收录于《谢林全集》第8卷，在谢林去世后很快由其子卡尔编辑出版。二战结束时，在被盟军炸毁的慕尼黑大学的废墟中，人们发现了前两份手稿，它们于1946年出版。这三份手稿只剩下一些残篇，仅包含谢林原本写作计划——“过去”、“现在”和“未来”三部曲的第一部分“过去”。在解释过去和现在相分离的关键点上，或者说在解释道Word如何从驱力自我封闭的旋转运动中出现的关键点上，它们中断了。然而，恰恰在其失败的地方，它们可以说登上了德国唯心论的顶峰，同时也突破进一个未知的领域，只有在德国唯心论的余晖中，其轮廓才变得清晰可辨。这一突破在第二手稿中最为明显，正因如此，本书选择翻译这一版本，它记录了谢林思想上的艰苦努力，因而读来也非常令人痛苦。

A SYSTEM OF FREEDOM

自由的体系

The philosophical system Schelling was working on from about 1807, after abandoning his earlier project of the so-called philosophy of identity, provides an exemplary case of the noncontemporaneity of a thought to its time, that is, of the paradoxical temporality in which staying behind coincides with being ahead. In its time, the predominant perception of this system was of a hopelessly outdated regression to premodern theosophy. It is now clear that the entire post-Hegelian constellation, from Marxism to the existentialist notion of finitude and temporality as the ultimate horizon of being, from deconstructionist “decentering" of the self-presence of logos to New Age obscurantism, has its roots in Schelling's late philosophy. 

在谢林抛弃了早期所谓“同一哲学”的计划之后，大约自1807年起他所致力的哲学体系，是典型的不合时宜的思想，或者说，它自相悖谬地既领先于它的时代，又落后于其时代。在当时，对这个体系的主流看法是：它无可救药地倒退回过时的、前现代的神智学。然而在当代，一个显而易见的事实是：整个后黑格尔哲学的星丛——从马克思主义到存在主义的作为终极存在论视域的时间性和有限性概念，从解构主义的逻各斯的自我在场的“去中心化”到新纪元运动的蒙昧主义，都在晚期谢林哲学中具有其根源。

Schelling's late philosophy should by no means be reduced to a mere “intermediate” phenomenon, announcing the contours of future thought in the inadequate language of the past. It rather functions as a kind of vanishing mediator, designating a unique constellation in which, for a brief moment after the disintegration of Absolute Idealism, something became visible that, once so-called post-Hegelian thought settled itself, and found shape in the guise of Schopenhauer, Marx, and Nietzsche, was again lost from sight. Schelling alone persisted in the impossible" position of the post-idealist crack that was quickly filled by the post-Hegelian reversals" of Idealism. Schelling's first name for this crack is the gap that forever separates Existence from its Ground, that is, the rational, articulated universe of the divine Word(logos) from that which in God himself is not God, from the contraction of the impenetrable Real that provides the support for the expansion of the divine Word.

绝不应该把谢林晚期哲学贬斥为简单的“中介”现象，即用过时的语言来揭示未来思想的轮廓。毋宁说，它作为一个消逝着的的中介，指明了那璀璨的群星，在绝对唯心论瓦解后不久，某种东西在那群星之中变得可见了，而一旦所谓的“后黑格尔思想”沉降下来，并在叔本华、马克思和尼采的外壳中成形，它又从视域中消失了。在该裂缝迅速被黑格尔之后的唯心论“颠倒”填补时，只有谢林一人坚持这道后唯心论裂缝之“不可能”的立场。谢林最初把这道裂缝叫做“永久地把存在与其根据分离开来的鸿沟”，也就是理性，即能被清楚地说出的神圣之道（逻各斯）的世界与在上帝之中而又不是上帝的那种东西的鸿沟，或者说，理性与那不可透视的实在的收缩之间的鸿沟，后者为前者即神圣之道的敞开提供了根据。

Against all false appearances and even occasional misformulations by Schelling himself, this gap that separates Existence from its Ground has nothing whatsoever to do with the premodern duality of cosmic principles" (Light and Darkness, Masculine and Feminine, etc.). There is an eternal temptation to supplement the standard idealist edifice with such a duality of principles; insofar as Plato was the first idealist, no wonder that one of the obsessions of the New Age approach is to unearth-beneath Plato's public teaching at our disposal in his written dialogues his true, esoteric doctrine. This secret teaching offers an exemplary case of the theoretical obscene Other that accompanies, as a shadowy double, the One of pure theory. On a closer look, the positive content of this secret teaching reveals itself to be popwisdom commonplaces a la Joseph Campbell sold in thousands at airport bookstores, New Age platitudes about the duality of cosmic principles: the One, the positive principle of Light, must be accompanied by primordial Otherness, the mysterious dark principle of feminine matter Therein resides the basic paradox: the secret we are supposed to discern through the arduous work of textual archaeology is none other than the most notorious New Age pop wisdom - a nice example of the Lacanian topology in which the innermost kernel coincides with the radical externality. Here is simply another chapter in the eternal fight waged by obscurantist Illumination against Enlightenment: insofar as Plato was the first great Enlightener, the obsession with Platos secret teaching bears witness to an effort to prove that Plato himself was an obscurantist preaching a special initiatic doctrine.(Note: Plato's secret teaching also offers an example of how the role of the initiatory secret doctrine is to patch the lack in the big Other (the field of Knowledge), its inconsistency. That is to say; the main argument for the existence of Platos secret teaching is the negative-dialectic character of the majority of Platos dialogues, from the earlier Socratic ones to Parmenides: these dialogues undermine a doxa without supplying a positive teaching to replace it - what (philosophical) common sense finds unacceptable is that the big Other’s inconsistency comes first and that the secret teaching is a secondary fantasmatic restitution of the unmutilated wholeness of the doctrine.)

不同于他人虚浮的误解甚至是谢林本人偶然的错误表述，这道分离存在与其根据的鸿沟与那些前现代的“宇宙原则”（光明与黑暗，男性与女性等等）毫无关系。长久以来存在着这样一种诱惑——用那些二元的原则来修补标准的唯心论体系。 既然柏拉图是史上第一位唯心论者，无怪乎令新纪元运动着迷的方法之一是：从柏拉图公开的、可供我们任意处置的教条之下发掘出他真正的、深奥的教诲。这所谓隐秘的教诲给我们提供了一个范例，即对于一个理论而言，繁芜的“他者”像影子一样紧紧跟随着“太一”。仔细一瞧，原来这一隐秘教诲的内容就是约瑟夫•坎贝尔的书里那种老生常谈的流俗“智慧”，在机场书店中，这种书数以千计地出售，又或者是新纪元运动关于宇宙二元性原则的陈词滥调：太一，作为光明的肯定性原则，必然伴以原始的他者性，即阴性或者说女性物质的神秘的、黑暗的原则。这里存在着一个根本性的悖论：我们通过艰苦的训诂考据工作才发掘出来的秘密不是别的，只是最臭名昭著的新纪元式的流俗“智慧”，这是拉康拓扑学的一个极好的例子，在他的拓扑学中，最内在的内核与极端的外在性短路了。对于反启蒙主义者而言，这不过是他们向启蒙发动的无休止的斗争的又一篇章：柏拉图当然是第一位伟大的启蒙思想家，但对柏拉图隐秘教诲的着迷，反倒证明了柏拉图本人是一个鼓吹某种原教旨的反启蒙主义者。（作者注：柏拉图的“隐秘教诲”也给我们提供了这样一个例证：“隐秘的原教旨”的作用是缝合知识领域的大他者的缺失或者说它的不一致性。也就是说，宣称柏拉图隐秘教诲存在的主要论据是柏拉图的对话大都是否定性的辩证法，从早期的苏格拉底篇到巴门尼德篇，这些对话动摇了常识，却没有提供肯定性的教诲来取代它，哲学上的常人之见无法接受这一点，即大他者的不一致性是原生的，而缝合它的“隐秘教诲”，作为对理论完整无缺的幻想性补偿，则是派生的。）

In spite of its theosophical flavor, Schelling's difference between Existence and its Ground radically undermines every dualism of “cosmological principles”. The central tenet of Schelling's “Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human FREEDOM," which immediately precedes Weltalter announces its problematic, is that if one is to account for the possibility of Evil, one has to presuppose a split of the Absolute itself into God insofar as he fully exists and the obscure, impenetrable Ground of his Existence. With characteristic speculative audacity Schelling locates the split that opens up the possibility of Evil in God himself. This distinction between God's Existence and its Ground, between the Absolute insofar as it fully exists, insofar as it is posited as such, illuminated by the Light of Reason, and the Absolute qua obscure longing (Sehnsucht) that strives for something outside itself without a clear notion of what it strives for, means that God is not fully himself" - that there is something in God that isnt God. In Philosophical Investigations, this relationship between the obscure Will of the Ground and the illuminated, effectively existing Will is not yet thought through, so that Schelling’s position is here, strictly speaking, contradictory. That is to say, his answer to the question What does the obscure Will aspire to?" is: it strives after illumination, it yearns for the Word to be pronounced. If, however, the obscure Will of the Ground itself aspires to logos, in what precise sense is it then opposed to it? Weltalter resolves this contradiction by qualifying the first Will as the divine Selbstheit, being-itself, as the contractive force that actively opposes the Light of Reason and thereby serves as the necessary ground of the latter’s expansion.

尽管有些神智学的色彩，但谢林对存在与其根据的区分从根本上动摇了任何一种自命为宇宙原则的二元论。谢林的上一部著作《对人类自由本质的哲学研究》的主旨宣告了《世界时代》要解决的问题：如果有人要解释恶的可能性，他就不得不把绝对自身的分裂预设进上帝之中，即上帝的完满存在与其存在的晦暗不明的、不可透视的根据之间的分裂。通过极为大胆的思辨，谢林把开启恶的可能性的分裂置于上帝自身之中。上帝的存在与其根据之间的区别，或者说，绝对一方面作为为理性之光所澄明的完满的存在与一方面又作为晦暗的意志之间的区别（这个晦暗意志渴求某种在自身之外的东西，却对它所渴望之物没有清楚的概念）意味着上帝不完全是他自身，在上帝之内存在着某种不是上帝的东西。在《哲学研究》中，作为根据的晦暗意志与澄明的、实存的意志之间的关系尚未被思考透彻，因此，严格说来，谢林此时的立场是自相矛盾的。也就是说，他对于“这个晦暗意志渴求什么”的问题的回答是：它追求澄明，它渴望道被说出。然而，如果说作为后者根据的晦暗意志自身渴求逻各斯，那么它究竟为什么又会去反对后者呢？通过将第一意志规定为“上帝的自私Selbstheit”或者说“存在自身”，规定为积极地对抗理性之光的收缩力量，并因此充当着后者膨胀的必然根据，《世界时代》解决了这一矛盾。

However, already in “Philosophical Investigations" Schelling’s position is more subtle than may appear: this obscure-impenetrable side of God, the Ground of his Existence, is not to be conceived as a positive Base, the true foundation of Being, with Reason as its parasitic accident: the Ground is in itself ontologically hindered, hampered, its status is in a radical sense preontological - it only is" sous rature, in the mode of its own withdrawal. The only true Substance is God in his actual Existence, and Grund is ultimately a name for Gods self-deferral, for that elusive X which lacks any proper ontological consistency; yet on account of which God is never fully himself, cannot ever attain full self-identity. God needs this foreign body in his heart since without this minimum of contractive force, he wouldnt be himself - what, paradoxically, forever prevents God from attaining full self-identity is the very impenetrable kernel of his Selbstheit. This tension in the midst of the Absolute itself is, therefore, far more enigmatic than it may appear, since it is thoroughly incompatible with the oppositions that define the space of traditional ontology: the opposition between Ground and Existence does not overlap with the opposition between mere possibility and actuality (if this were the case, Ground couldnt corrode from within the self-identity of actual Existence); it is not simply a new name for the duality of the Real and the Ideal in Schellings early philosophy, that is, for the symmetrical polarity of two ontological principles (the Ground is less" than Existence, it lacks full ontological consistency); it definitely doesnt imply that Ground is in any way the true substance" or foundation" of Reason. The enigma resides in the fact that Ground is ontologically nonaccomplished, less" than Existence, but it is precisely as such that it corrodes from within the consistency of the ontological edifice of Existence. In other words, Schelling first opposes Existence (the fully actual God) and the mere Ground of Existence (the blind striving that lacks actuality) as the Perfect and the Imperfect, and then goes on to treat the two as complementary and to conceive true completeness as the unity of the two, as if the Perfect itself needs the Imperfect in order to assert itself. This is why there is Evil in the world: on account of the perverse need of the Perfect for the Imperfect, as if the intersection of the Perfect and the Imperfect is more perfect than the Perfect itself.

然而，即使在《哲学研究》中，谢林的立场也比其看似所是更加微妙：上帝晦暗的、不可透视的一面，即他存在的根据并未被视为一肯定性的基础或者说存在的真正的基础，理性也并未被视为附着于前者之上的偶然事物，相反地，根据在本体论上自在地受到阻碍，它的地位归根结底是前本体论的——它只是一种自我回撤因而自我擦除的东西。唯一真实的实体是实存着的上帝，而根据只不过是对上帝之自我阻滞的命名，因为这不可捉摸的未知之物（指根据）缺乏本体论上恰如其分的一致性，因而上帝永远不是完满的他自身，他永远不能获得完满的自我同一性。上帝需要这一外在之物于他的心灵之内，因为假使没有这样一种最小的收缩力量，他将不再是他自身。然而，这里有一个悖论：永恒地阻止上帝获得完满的自我同一性的东西恰恰是他自己的不可透视的内核。因此，这一绝对自身之中的张力，比它看似所是更为神妙，因为它完全不同于规定着传统本体论场域的对立，即根据和存在的对立与可能性和现实性的对立之间没有交集，若非如此，根据不可能从内部破坏实存的自我同一性。它并不是谢林早期哲学中的二元性——现实性与理想性的新名称，或者本体论原则中对称的两极的新名称，根据是“少”于存在的东西，它缺乏本体论上完满的一致性。这绝不意味着根据从任何角度看来都是理性的“真实的实体”或“基础”。谜团就在于这样一个事实：根据在本体论上是未完成的、“少”于存在的，但正因如此，它从内部瓦解了存在的本体论体系的一致性。换言之，谢林首先将存在（完满的实存的上帝）与仅仅作为存在之根据的东西（缺乏现实性的盲目驱力）的对立把握为完美者和不完美者之间的对立，继而又把两者视为互补性的，把真正的完整设想为两者的统一，似乎完美需要不完美来维持自己。这就是恶存在于世的缘由，由于完美对不完美的有悖常识的需要，完美与不完美的交织仿佛比完美本身更加完美。

This paradoxical need of the Perfect for the Imperfect is another name for the Hegelian project of conceiving the Absolute "not only as Substance, but also as Subject." That is to say, what one should always bear in mind is that, in the opposition between (imperfect) Ground and (perfect) Existence. Subject is on the side of Ground qua imperfect: subject designates the imperfection of Substance, the inherent gap, self-deferral, distance-from-itself, which forever prevents Substance from fully realizing itself, from becoming fully itself. The fact that there is something in God that is not God means that Substance implies Subject as its constitutive openness, gap. This also throws new light on the ontological status of sexual difference: Schelling explicitly sexualizes the relationship between Existence and its Ground, conceiving Ground as the impenetrable feminine foundation of the male Word. As such, Ground must remain in the background, silent: the moment Ground usurps the leading role, it changes from a beneficient protective power to a horrible fury bent on destroying every determinate Existence. It is easy to recognize here the standard patriarchal fear of the destructive force of fully asserted femininity. There is, however, another, perhaps unexpected conclusion to be drawn from this: is this radical negativity bent on destroying every determinate Existence not the very kernel of subjectivity? Does this not mean that subjectivity is, in its most basic dimension, in an unheard-of way, feminine? Insofar as subject is the ground that asserts itself as such, in the very medium of Existence against every determinate form of actual existence, subject is a potentiality, never fully actualized, and the feminine Ground asserted against the "masculine" existence-logos. 

这种完美者对不完美者的悖论式的需要，是黑格尔哲学的要义“绝对既是主体，也是实体”的别名。也就是说，人们应当时刻牢记：在存在（完美）与根据（不完美）的对立中，主体处于不完美的根据的一侧，主体标志着实体的不完美性、内在的裂隙、自我阻滞、与自身拉开的距离，它永远阻止实体完全实现自身，阻止实体变成“圆满的自己”。上帝之中存在着某种不是上帝的东西这一事实，意味着实体必然包含主体作为它的构成性的开放性与裂隙。这也使本体论上的性别差异变得更加清楚：谢林明确地性化了存在与其根据之间的关系，把不可透视的“女性性”根据视为男性话语的基石。因此，根据必须保持为背景性的沉默，它一旦篡夺了主导地位，就会由仁慈的呵护力量变成可怕的狂暴的力量，它决心毁灭所有确定的存在。在此，很容易看到那种典型的父权制对彻底的女性性所具有的毁灭性力量的恐惧。然而，这里会得出一个或许出乎意料的结论：这种决心毁灭一切确定存在的激进的否定性，不正是主体性的内核吗？这不就意味着主体性在其最根本的层面上，竟前所未闻地是“女性的”吗？由此说来，主体正是那自为的根据，它以存在为中介来反对实存的一切确定的形式，主体是从未被完全实现的潜能，并且是女性化的自为根据，它反抗“男性化的”存在之逻各斯。

This basic insight of Schelling whereby, prior to its assertion as the medium of rational Word, the subject is the pure “night of the Self”, the “infinite lack of being”, the violent gesture of contraction that negates every being outside itself, also forms the core of Hegel's notion of madness: when Hegel determines madness as withdrawal from the actual world, the closing of the soul into itself, its contraction, the cutting-off of its links with external reality, he all too quickly conceives this withdrawal as a "regression" to the level of the "animal soul "still embedded in its natural environs and determined by the rhythm of nature (night and day etc.). Does this withdrawal, on the contrary, not designate the severing of the links with the Umwelt, the end of the subjects immersion in its immediate natural surroundings, and is it as such not the founding gesture of "humanization?" Was this withdrawal into self not accomplished by Descartes in his universal doubt and reduction to cogito, which, as Derrida pointed out in his "Cogito and the History of Madness, " also involves a passage through the moment of radical madness? Are we thus not back at the well-known passage from Jenaer Realphilosophie, where Hegel characterizes the experience of pure Self qua "abstract negativity", the "eclipse of (constituted) reality ", the contraction into self of the subject, as the "night of the world:

谢林的这一基本洞见：主体在成为理性之道的中介以前，是纯粹的“自我的黑夜”、“存在的无尽的缺失”。这一否定自身之外的所有存在的收缩的暴力姿态也构成了黑格尔的“疯狂”概念的核心，当黑格尔把“疯狂”规定为从现实世界的回撤，规定为灵魂的自我封闭，规定为它的“收缩”，规定为它与外部现实的联系之断开时，他也仓促地把这一回撤视为向“动物灵魂的层次”的“倒退”，然而即使是动物也仍然与自然环境浑然一体，并且受到自然节律（比如昼夜等等）的支配。相反地，这回撤难道不就标志着主体与自然的联系的断开，不就标志着主体沉浸于其直接的自然环境的状态之终结，因而它不就是为“人性化”奠基的姿态吗？这种向自我的回撤不是由笛卡尔通过普遍的怀疑而缩回到我思中完成了吗？正如德里达在《我思与疯狂史》中所述，笛卡尔之所为不就是那条通往极端疯狂的时点的通道吗？因此，我们不就回到《耶拿实在哲学》里那广为人知的段落了吗？在那里，黑格尔把作为“抽象的否定性”的纯粹自我、“（被建构起来的）现实的瓦解”、主体收缩进自身的体验描述为“世界之夜”：

The human being is this night, this empty nothing that contains everything in its simplicity - an unending wealth of many representations, images, of which none happens to him or which are not present. This night, the inner of nature, that exists here - pure self - in phantasmagorical presentations, is night all around it, in which here shoots a bloody head - there another white shape, suddenly here before it, and just so disappears. One catches sight of this night when one looks human beings in the eye - into a night that becomes awful.

人就是这黑夜，在其自身的单纯性之中，它空无一物却又蕴含着万物，其中贮藏着数不尽的表象和图象，虽然没有一个对人而言显现过或者在场。这黑夜，作为自然的内在禀性，在这儿，在纯粹的自我中，在梦幻泡影般的表象中存在着，它无所不在，这儿冒出个血淋淋的头颅，那儿又冒出个惨白的鬼影，它们一闪即逝。你只要注视着人的眼睛，就会见到这愈发恐怖的黑夜。